Travel Agent Chifley

Being a student of Modern History since my high school days I was keen to go to the sites of the Bolshevik Revolutions of 1918 and see for myself. How many times had I studied ‘Bloody Sunday’ of 1905, Rasputin and the Romanovs in World War I, and the events of March and October (or November) 1918? And what of the Civil War that followed and New Economic Policy and the Five Year Plans?

I could go on and mention the Stalinist Show Trials of the 1930’s and the devastation of the Second World War, but I won’t. Nor will I mention the Kruschev Era and the USSR’s last chance to make it as a modern nation state and the slow, inexorable decline heralded in by Brezhnev and culminating in the dead hand of Andropov.

Gorbachev’s stab at saving the Soviet Union with glasnost and perestroika – openness and restructuring – failed, and the Wall came down. Since then they’ve had Yeltsin and Putin. Things have changed all right and Russia is clearly a more open and varied and wealthy society than the one I observed from afar through the seventies and eighties.

The bits of Russia I’ve seen are the two metropolitan cities. At the risk of sounding outrageous I’d liken them to Sydney and Canberra. Sydney grew from scratch in an unplanned way to end up a bit like Topsy – and so did Moscow. Canberra was planned from the outset and is interesting for its monuments – and the same applies to St Petersburg.

Moscow sprawls and its traffic is awesome: six lane avenues choked like car parks, and high rise in all the suburbs. But the centre – that area lying within Stalin’s Art Deco Seven Sisters – is relatively low rise and contains all those features you see in the brochures: St Basil’s, the Kremlin, Red Square, Lenin’s Tomb, the Alexander Gardens, the Bolshoi Ballet, the Arbat Shopping precinct and , of course, the Moscow Metro.

Nothing prepares you for your first view of any one of these: you’ve heard so much about them and seen them so often that you’re a bit blasé about them. And then they’re right in front of you: the castellations of the red brick Kremlin walls, the grim geometry of Lenin’s resting place, the vastness of Red Square and at the end – above the river – are the mad onion domes of St Basil’s and its crazy mix of bold colours and curly shapes.

And that’s just the beginning! The Moscow Metro makes the jaw drop. Talk about beauty! You’ve heard that it features chandeliers and sculptures, friezes, bass reliefs and ceramic wonders, but the ‘sad’ thing is that the Muscovites are generally in too much of a hurry to see them. Getting home in near unbearable din must dull the senses after a while.

The Metro alone is sufficient reason to be in Moscow. It’s a great puzzle of Cyrillic script and intersecting lines and the Russians don’t concede much to English speakers by way of signs. Fortunately, an English-speaking local will almost always ask you if they can assist. Nice!

St Petersburg pre-dates Canberra by about two hundred years, and its site on the Neva and access to the sea give it a huge advantage. This is where the Bolsheviks gained victory by grabbing a few significant sites (I simplify). On one bank is the Winter Palace and on the other the Peter and Paul Fortress, and just ‘over there’ is the ‘Aurora’, the ship that signalled the start of the coup, still afloat and still in great shape. The art of The Hermitage, and Alexander Place, are essential visits. As is Peter the Great’s palace just out of town.

Beautiful buildings, another efficient Metro, and a remarkable bus, trolley bus and light rail system. Of course I went to the Finland Station for its associations with Lenin, but I also went to the ballet and discovered that ‘Swan Lake’ is very beautiful and – to my great surprise – very funny. I also went to the Circus in the Big Top to enjoy an animal-free occasion packed with clowns, and athletic performers on the high wire, remarkable backdrops and sensational lighting effects. Not to be missed – and not hard to find.

There’s plenty more, but I’m out of space – and I’ve not even mentioned medieval Novgorod yet.

My advice is simple: go! You don’t know what you’re missing.

Journal and photos by Dave.